1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a conveyer and an aligning apparatus for various types of objects having substantially rectangular box shapes. The present invention relates particularly to an apparatus suitable for conveying and aligning used and recovered lens-fitted photographic packages to be fed to a disassembling process.
2. Description of the Related Art
A belt conveyer using a flat belt is capable of conveying a large number of objects at a high speed. Because the flat belt of the belt conveyer vibrates with the conveying movement, if objects are unstably loaded thereon at random posture, some objects may fall from the flat belt. To prevent the falling, fences are conventionally provided along the lateral sides of the flat belt.
A feeder which can automatically disperse a cluster of objects into individual pieces and feed the objects in series, has been disclosed, for example, in JPB 44-29098 and JPB 62-29195. Specifically, the former discloses a feeder which makes use of electromagnetic vibration and a specific resilient material for spacing objects. The latter publication discloses a feeder which uses a robot hand having a touch sensor so as to pick up an individual object from a plurality of objects.
Indeed, the flat belt conveyer having fences can rapidly and smoothly convey those objects which have same or approximately same shapes and dimensions, but the conventional flat belt conveyer cannot effectively convey a plurality of objects having different shapes and dimensions or those objects which are wrapped or encased with paper, film or the like. In such cases, a part of the object or a part of the wrapper may curled, and become jammed or trapped in a stationary portion of the belt conveyer, resulting in the need to interrupt operation of the conveyer.
The feeder using a robot hand can reliably pick up an individual piece from among a plurality of objects lying at random postures and orient the objects in the same direction. However, a robot hand feeder cannot reliably handle objects whose wrappers or cases are partly broken. Besides, the working speed of such a device is low. Electromagnetic vibration feeders are complicated in construction, and the running speed thereof cannot easily be controlled.
Meanwhile, various types of lens-fitted photographic film packages, hereinafter referred to as film packages, are now on the market. The film package is fundamentally constructed of a plastic resin package body loaded with film in factory. The package body is constituted of a main body section having a lens unit, a shutter unit and/or a printed circuit board thereon, and front and rear cover sections removably attached to the main body section. The package body is encased in a cardboard case, and the film package is used in this condition. After exposure of all available frames of the film, the film package is forwarded to a photofinishing laboratory where the exposed film is removed for developing and printing from the package body after breaking a part of the case.
Because of the increased need for reuse of industrial materials, it is desirable to recover the emptied package body along with the cardboard case for reuse. For example, JPA 3-243930, JPA 4-17730 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,021,811 disclose film packages or single-use cameras which are designed for recycling. However, because the used and recovered package bodies are mostly encased in the partly broken cardboard cases, and the film packages have different shapes and dimensions according to the type and the manufacturer, conventional feeders are not reliable in handling the recovered package bodies.
Furthermore, it is necessary, for automatic disassembling of the used package bodies, to uniformly orient the package bodies before the disassembling process. However, neither the above-described robot hand feeder nor other conventional aligning apparatus can discriminate between the upright posture and the upside-down posture of the film package. Therefore, it has been necessary to manually align the recovered film packages. This makes the recycling of the film packages labor intensive and expensive.